There is a legend that Dennis Ritchie, inventor of
C, once responded to demands for features resembling
those of what at the time was a much more popular language by observing
“If you want PL/I, you know where to find it.” Ever since,
this has been hackish standard form for fending off requests to alter a new
design to mimic some older (and, by implication, inferior and
baroque) one. The case X =
Pascal manifests semi-regularly on Usenet's
comp.lang.c newsgroup. Indeed,
the case X = X has been reported in discussions of graphics software (see
X).